Saturday, October 24, 2015

No one blackens anything anymore but I blackened some tilapia for dinner and lamented the passing of food trends. Who cares about food trends? Certainly pas moi.

But that's what you eat after herding chickens all afternoon while constructing a garden gate from salvaged lumber and foraged bamboo. (Lumber salvaged from my falling-down garage, bamboo foraged half a block away.)

Pleasure in hole-drilling, attaching the sawn (Japanese pull saw) lengths of bamboo to the 1x2 fir planks. All the while the feathered girls making a scratchy mess of my yard: pursuit of bugs. I seem to have forestalled my seasonal melancholy with my acquisition of poultry. And I gotta say, it's a complete surprise.

Cluck cluck.
Eggseggseggs.

What brings me joy?
—Dragging home 30' lengths of bamboo, scritchy-scratchy, all the way up the widewalk.
—Picking up a chicken (such docile creatures!).
—Making a clean cut with the saw.
—Seeing my gate take shape.
—No where to go but where I am.

No names quite yet, but I thought Fallopia would be fitting. And possibly Ovaria. Gotta come up with three names for three chickens. But then again, maybe one name for all three chickens. Or rename them every week/month/equinox. Would the chickens care?

One thing that's become most evident in this new venture is how staid I've become in my routines, and how this small, feathered flock (with surprisingly menacing claws) has upset the chicken cart, as it were.

I've especially enjoyed watching them plucking and fussing at the straw when settling in the nest to lay an egg. Two of them apparently had the egg urge at the same time this morning and climbed all over each other to find the best spot. When I returned, about a half hour later, there was the gift of two eggs.

I'm not holding my breath for a golden egg that I could bring to the King aka Bank of America so I can pay off my mortgage. Or at the least, trade for a few magic beans. (But where would I go, climbing that magic bean stalk?) But who knows. Every new venture opens doors (and in this case, it's a coop door).

"What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. . . . "—Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse"Like other poets, I am often asked if I have a spiritual practice. Yes, writing is my spiritual practice."— Alicia Ostriker

"The trick, Gloria thought as she experienced near-whiplash at the revelation, was to keep the level of believing in magic constant."—Marylinn Kelly

"Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me."—Sigmund Freud

"...and following the wrong god home we may miss our star."—William Stafford

"I am in love with the world.""—Maurice Sendak

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.” —Rainier Maria Rilke"Writing means revealing oneself to excess."--Franz Kafka"There isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails. " --Raymond Carver"Someone I loved once gave mea box full of darkness.It took me years to understandthat this, too, was a gift. "--Mary Oliver"In the middle of the journey of our lifeI found myself in a dark wood,For I had lost the right path.And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars." --Dante Alighieri